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8th December 2012, 09:53 PM | #41 |
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8th December 2012, 10:05 PM | #42 |
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8th December 2012, 10:24 PM | #43 |
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Would Great Britain have been able to contain and control America even without the revolutionary war? And to what extent and for how long?
Would black people have remained slaves to this day without the civil war? Would Nazi Germany have really been able to invade America and fight Russia at the same time? Was Hitler that stupid? What if Hitler won? Would we really all be Nazi now? I doubt it. Did we really need to invade Iraq? What if Iran gets a nuke? Does one more nuke in the world really matter? Oh I know that there might be different answers to all of these questions. But war is still stupid to me. |
8th December 2012, 10:30 PM | #44 |
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8th December 2012, 10:33 PM | #45 |
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8th December 2012, 10:47 PM | #46 |
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But they didn't fight it. We did. Was it worth it to us? How? If South Korea falls will Korea invade downtown LA? I doubt it.
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8th December 2012, 11:01 PM | #47 |
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8th December 2012, 11:17 PM | #48 |
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8th December 2012, 11:40 PM | #49 |
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The cold war - taming an enemy by destruction of his system of thought.
Whatever the Russians call the war Napoleon started in 1812 culminating in the battle of Leipzig - decisive rout of a powerful invader. The Punic wars (well, the last one anyway) - permanent elimination of a rival great power. The Norman conquest - successful replacement of one ruling elite by another. There must be loads of these. |
8th December 2012, 11:50 PM | #50 |
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9th December 2012, 12:07 AM | #51 |
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If you're only talking wars that were successful for the aggressors, that's different of course.
Although I'm not sure the world would have been better off with dictatorships that were a little less aggressive enough to stick around instead of losing a war they started. |
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9th December 2012, 12:22 AM | #52 |
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9th December 2012, 12:31 AM | #53 |
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Agree with all of these. Despite seeing some good nominations in this thread, I still think the Cold War takes the cake. Consider, each faction had devastating weapons which could have destroyed the other side, yet neither used them. Has there ever in history been a parallel to this?
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9th December 2012, 12:39 AM | #54 |
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I'm not sure "world is better off" is actually congruent with "successful war". You seem to be moving the goalposts.
Though, to be fair, the OP appears to be more about "the world is never better off with warfare", than about "who has had the most success at getting what they want through applied violence". So your subsitution of the former for the latter is understandable. Personally, I think that the way the OP's question is phrased, it's obviously arguing in bad faith. |
9th December 2012, 01:00 AM | #55 |
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9th December 2012, 02:35 AM | #56 |
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Without war of some kind Britain wouldn't have let go of it. Now imagine the British empire with access to the full resources of the north American continent. Would have grown larger and faster during the 19th century. Napoleon would have been less of a problem at the start nabbing the Spanish colonies would have been viable by the 1850s and china towards the end. Scramble for Africa would have consisted of a few token bits being Left to Portugal . No WW1 or 2 (who would be crazy enough to pick a fight with someone that powerful hanging around). By 1950s even European nations would be losing their independence and by 1990s earth would be united under the queen-emperess of mankind. Of course this is with all the atitudes of the british empire in force and unmoderated so it kinda sucks.
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9th December 2012, 03:33 AM | #57 |
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You claimed South Koreans didn't fight in the Korean War, which is patently false. Twice as many South Koreans fought in the war as all other allied forces combined. 77% of all allied military deaths were South Koreans. In addition a third of a million South Korean civilians died and another third of a million disappeared. As for what the allies got out of it; they got the immediate benefits that come from standing behind and supporting an ally, with the strengthening of international relations. In particular the US has found a very staunch ally in South Korea, with a myriad of benefits. The world in general has benefited from South Korea's success as a free democratic state. They are a leader in robotics and biotech, and one of the largest importers and exporters in the world; providing a great deal of products for us to buy, and buying a great deal of products off us. |
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9th December 2012, 05:44 AM | #59 |
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If we accept Von Clauswitz's point of view war is relations by other means, but I would have hoped we have moved on from that and come to realize that war in itself is a catastrophic failure to be got over and done with as quickly as possible and only ever the absoulutly last resrot when all else has failed, and is only seen as part of that wider failure to prevent the conflict.
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9th December 2012, 05:47 AM | #60 |
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It may be that the US was more successful in WWII than other victors. I would argue that the UK, while a victor, wasn't successful in its presumptive war aims given that Poland (and Czechoslovakia) ended up under an invading power anyway. Not only that but WWII definitively sounded the death knell of the British Empire. And, of the French.
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9th December 2012, 10:02 AM | #61 |
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A lot of people may view war that way but if you look at the world for the last couple of decades you'll still see lots of people who are happy to use war/terror/genocide to get what they want. And no sign of that ending soon.
And while there are still people that aren't peace loving western liberals, then even peace loving western liberals had better keep some kind of armed force handy. |
9th December 2012, 01:04 PM | #62 |
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9th December 2012, 05:12 PM | #63 |
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The deaths of the S Korean civilians demonstrate wanton inhumanity on the part of the N Korean regime, its backers and allies. No doubt of that. And the political and military elites of these regimes deserve all the punishment that comes their way. But dear God, look at this casualty list.
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9th December 2012, 05:51 PM | #64 |
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You do realize that the Western Allies also bombed civilian areas heavily in WW2, despite the US and UK fighting for freedom and democracy.
The reason: "Practically all of the major military industrial targets strategically important to the enemy forces and to their war potential have been neutralized." - Lt. Gen. George E. Stratemeyer, FEAF Commander, less than two months into the Korean War After destroying North Korea's industry in the first two months of the war, USAF B-29 Superfortresses operated in many varied roles, from close support of troops on the ground to bombing bridges on the Yalu River. The air war in Korea also saw the extensive use of smaller tactical aircraft to attack strategic targets. http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/fac...et.asp?id=1933 To summarize: strategic bombing was considered a valuable tool in bringing the war to a satisfactory conclusion at less cost to allied forces. |
9th December 2012, 06:06 PM | #65 |
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@Giz
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9th December 2012, 06:21 PM | #66 |
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I think the Korean War success record, from the point of the UN/US forces could be summarized as:
Early (almost catastrophic) failure Successful counter-attack and defence of South Korea Stalemate-failure The fact that the war has not, even now, been drawn to a full conclusion suggests that overall it was one of the worst failures. |
9th December 2012, 06:48 PM | #67 |
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The Greek Poleis victory at The Battle Of Plataea. Without it, Xerxes conquers Greece, and Athenian style Democracy dies in 480 BC.
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9th December 2012, 07:30 PM | #68 |
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I was originally thinking perhaps that Stankape's US Revolution might be the one, but then I thought, wait a second. If we'd held out, perhaps we'd just be Canada with better weather and single payer healthcare now. Then I thought, but sure, Canada got some of its benefits from the non-UK States, and without us they'd have been different, so then I wondered what would be different, and then I decided to chuck the whole thing because after a war nobody can ever know again what the world might have been without it. We're stuck with the history we have.
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9th December 2012, 08:24 PM | #69 |
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The world in general has also benefited in that South Korea acts as a further restraint on Chinese imperialism, and effectively neutralizes (North) Korea as a Chinese satellite. Instead of having a unified Korean peninsula to do its bidding and apply pressure in the region, China is forced to accept an impasse that requires substantial resources just to maintain.
A major benefit to the US and everyone else is not having a Kim regime on the Korean peninsula with freedom of action and Chinese backing. Interestingly, South Korea is a much more geostrategically effective partner than North Korea. So it's really more of an impasse for China than for the US. That sure looks like a successful war to me. |
9th December 2012, 09:27 PM | #70 |
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A succesful war? Here is Mark Twain's bitter prayer for a succesful war:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXhJG7S9tjw And Wilfred Owen on glory, and honor for the fighting soldier: http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html |
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9th December 2012, 09:58 PM | #71 |
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For those of us who don't click on YouTube links, would you be willing to summarize Twain's view of warfare here, and tell us also whether or not you share his view?
As for Wilfred Owen; what, in your opinion, does the unfortunate lot of the combat infrantryman have to do with the question of successful war? Owen I respect for having captured in poetry the horrible essence of the soldier in combat. You, not so much, on account of your citation of Owen appearing to be an appeal to emotion, gratuitous in that it doesn't even seem to support an argument. Did you have an argument? Or do you just like tossing out random war poems in random war threads? |
9th December 2012, 10:04 PM | #72 |
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Sadly, the industrialisation of warfare far out-stripped technology's ability to limit it, so that, for a period of about 60 years or so, you had significant legitimate military targets located in major population centres, but no way to effectively target them without causing harm to civilians as well. The end result was a number of wars (notably WWI, WW2, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War) with terribly high civilian casualties. |
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10th December 2012, 12:13 AM | #73 |
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The Six Day War Israel v Syria, Jordan and the UAR (United Arab Republic, now called Egypt) June 5–10, 1967, has to rank up there with some of the most successful ones.
The three Arab nations started it, the Israelis finished it in short order, sending Arab forces packing with their tails between their legs. Israel ended up taking the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from the UAR, the West Bank of the Jordan river from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. So far, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip are the only bits they have given back. |
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10th December 2012, 12:30 AM | #74 |
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10th December 2012, 12:39 AM | #75 |
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10th December 2012, 01:52 AM | #76 |
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10th December 2012, 02:02 AM | #77 |
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10th December 2012, 02:41 AM | #78 |
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It still does not detract from the essential point that war is itself the ultimate failure, and even more of a failure if people start beleiving and accepting that it is an acceptable means of pursuing human affairs as a first and not a last resort, that shows a bgiger failure, you would have thought we could have learnt by now that a third conflcit means there will not be many people left around to draw any fresh lessons.
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10th December 2012, 07:33 AM | #79 |
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10th December 2012, 09:19 AM | #80 |
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Mark Twain's The War Prayer is a short story censuring the patriotic fervor felt by citizens during a war. In the story, there is a religious service to ask for God's aid in battle. An old man walks to the front of the congregation and says aloud what was implicit in the parishioner's prayer: Suffering and destruction for the enemy.
I think Owen's poem bonds with Twain's story. It vividly describes the suffering in combat mentioned by Twain. This thread is about successful wars. Those 2 works portray what successful wars require. |
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